Wine has played a positive role in maintaining human health by providing a sanitary source of water, through its psychoactive effects on the state of one's mind and by providing a reliable source of calories. In the early 1970's, the scientific and medical communities began taking an interest in the human health benefits of antioxidants including polyphenols. In 2003, trans-resveratrol was brought to the public's attention once it was reported that trans-resveratrol had life-extending properties. Concurrently it was advertised that trans-resveratrol is abundantly available in red wines as a result of the antioxidant being present in the skins of red grapes. With the intense interest in the health benefits of resveratrol by the scientific and medical communities has come a concurrent interest in the free market promotion of these proposed benefits. A 2008 study of the red wine market in Spain demonstrated that consumers were willing to pay a higher price for a resveratrol enhanced red wine than for its non-enhanced counterpart. Since then, many attempts have been made to enhance or add resveratrol to food and beverages to provide its health benefits.
While the interest in the health benefits of resveratrol has spiked so has the interest in the health benefits of pterostilbene and quercetin. While there are many flavonoids available, over 6,000, pterostilbene, implicated in anticarcinogenesis, modulation of neurological disease, anti-inflammation, attenuation of vascular disease and amelioration of diabetes and quercetin used for treating conditions of the heart and blood vessels including hardening of the arteries, high cholesterol, heart disease and circulation problems have received special attention. Quercetin has become very popular because of the wide range of health benefits it offers in other areas including diabetes, cataracts, hay fever, peptic ulcer, schizophrenia, inflammation, asthma, gout, viral infections, chronic fatigue syndrome, preventing cancer and for treating chronic infections of the prostate.
Pterostilbene is found in almonds, vaccinium berries, and grape leaves and vines, but not in the actual grapes themselves and thus does not make their way into red wine. Quercetin is found in a variety of plants including red onion, radish, sweet potato, capers, fennel and more. Despite the high levels of flavonoids in many of these foods, studies have shown that the oral bioavailability is quite low and is rapidly cleared from the body. Because of the known antioxidant and anti-inflammatory health benefits as well as the support of the cardiovascular and nervous systems that comes from these flavonoids, a way to infuse them into food, beverage, cosmetic or drug products has become desired.
Flavonoids such as Resveratrol, Pterostilbene and quercetin have been found to have significant anti-oxidative effects on human metabolism and thus are believed to be efficacious in improving brain, heart, metabolic and other organ health. It has recently been confirmed that flavonoids such as resveratrol, pterostilbene, and quercetin in various combinations can act synergistically and additively. Thus, improving the benefits to human health over administering just a single flavonoid at a time.
There have been many forms of resveratrol, quercetin and pterostilbene enhanced products introduced to the market, but none provide for the flavonoids to be bioavailable for appropriate absorption by the human body, thus the “enhanced” qualities of the food or beverage becomes digested without being absorbed by the human body. Instead of being absorbed, the flavonoid additive is digested and eventually expelled from the body without significant absorption, thus making the enhancement of the food or beverage non-effective. Typically, flavonoid enhanced products simply include an amount of resveratrol or other flavonoid powder being added to the normal ingredients of the food or beverage since the resveratrol or other flavonoid powder adds very little to no flavor.
Currently, the common form of bioavailable resveratrol available to the consumer is provided from drinking red wine. It should be appreciated that merely ingesting an amount of resveratrol, whether in raw powder form, pill form, or as a suspended solid immixed within a liquid provides little, if any, bioavailability, thus the ingested resveratrol is digested and excreted without being available to the cells of the body. In fact, recent studies (Walle et al, Drug Metabolism and Disposition Vol 32, No. 12, pgs. 1377-1382 Jun. 7, 2004) have provided that “[a]ll attempts to find measurable levels of Resveratrol in plasma after the oral dose at any time point in [patients] failed” In oral dose scenarios, the free resveratrol essentially never makes it into the bloodstream.
A number of attempts have been made to provide for resveratrol or flavonoid enhanced beverages, however, many teach simply adding an amount of flavonoid or resveratrol powder to a beverage. These attempts fail to provide a flavonoid or resveratrol enhanced beverage because the flavonoid or resveratrol added little or no free flavonoid or resveratrol, rather it only becomes a suspended solid forming an aqueous solution, and becomes digested and excreted from the body with minimal absorption by the body. Moreover, while there have been many failed attempts to add flavonoid or resveratrol, nothing exists which provides a combination of a flavonoid and resveratrol enhanced beverage.
Presently, antioxidants are combined in powdered, capsuled, gelled or pilled form. However, it has been recognized that these powders are poorly soluble in water and thus, when ingested into the body, are minimally bioavailable and thus an inefficient way for the market to provide bioavailable flavonoids. Thus, there remains an unmet need at providing a method of making batch-mixed bioavailable tinctures of individual or multiple flavonoids for infusing a beverage, food, cosmetic or drug to provide a bioavailable dose of one or more flavonoids.
It is appreciated that it is desirable to have one or more flavonoids included in a tincture to provide for a synergistic result from a mixture of flavonoids. It should be understood that by mixing two or more flavonoids first, then exposing the flavonoid mixture to a solvent will result in an imbalance of the flavonoids in solution. Thus where a particular concentration of two or more flavonoids is desired, simply adding two or more flavonoids, then adding a solvent, will not result in the desired bioavailable concentration of the selected flavonoids. One solution is to add additional solvent until all the flavonoids dissolve in solution, however, in some cases large amounts of solvents are undesirable, for instance ethanol, in this case, may begin to affect the alcohol by volume of the food or beverage to above lawful levels. Thus there remains an unmet need for a tincture, and a process for making the same, that includes two or more flavonoids, and that results in the desired concentration of the selected flavonoids. Likewise, certain flavonoids have a higher affinity for dissolving in a solvent or in a particular solvent. It is appreciated that it may be desirable to provide a tincture that includes a mixture of solvents, for instance, to reduce the effect on the alcohol by volume (ABV) adjustment of the food or beverage in which a tincture is being infused. Simply mixing solvents may not result in the bioavailable dose of the flavonoid. Thus there remains an unmet need for a tincture, and a process for making the same, that includes two or more solvents, and that results in the desired concentration of the selected flavonoids.